Today I’ll be focusing on how to increase your opt-in rates and grow your list size. When it comes to lists, bigger is usually better and let no one tell you otherwise. Quality is also important but it’s usually easy to weed out the people who aren’t interested in what you’re selling.
When talking about email lists, strength is always in the numbers!
I’ve already talked about to how to increase your open email rates and your click-through rates. There isn’t much I can tell you about the products you choose to market or sell other than that you should steer clear of crappy and shady deals and offer people real value. If you have real value and you have decent email open rates, implementing these 5 tricks will help you skyrocket your opt-in rates and increase your profits!
Make sure your opt-in form is visible
You have a great page and people would love to get updates from you – they’ve said so repeatedly! Unfortunately, you’ve buried your opt-in form at the bottom of your page and no one gets to see it, ever. It’s time to dig it out of the gutter and place it somewhere more prominent. Trust me, your subscribe rates will simply flourish after that.Add your opt-in form on different parts of your page:
- Feature box
- Sidebar
- Footer of the page
- Your About page
Source: Camping Reviewed – an example of a clearly visible opt-in form on the right.
There is no reason why your opt-in form should appear in one place only – as long as you don’t go really overboard with it, there shouldn’t be a problem if it appears in various places. If your opt-in form is at the top of your page (the most valuable real estate on your site) you will get more opt-in but you will also miss out on collecting emails from people who scroll down when reading and don’t bother to go back up! Carefully positioned opt-in forms allow you to grab email addresses from various parts of your website.
Add a smart pop-up opt-in form
A lot of people find these obtrusive but this really isn’t the case – if your visitor isn’t interested in the offer they will simply click X and that’s that. However, if they are interested in your content and your offers and they forgot to subscribe this will be your last chance to remind them. It’s really simple to add a small pop up to your site that’s going to intelligently display. There are numerous plug-ins in WordPress for that and my favourite is SumoMe. It does a ton of other stuff but I primarily use it to display an opt-in form that comes up when my visitors go to close my website. It costs me absolutely nothing to do it and it generates great results!Customize your opt-in form
One size does not fit all! There is nothing worse than a generic opt-in form that says nothing about you or your business. If you went through the trouble of adding an opt-in form, go a step further and customize it. Add a short description that talks to your visitor to the intent they had when they visited your page and change those default settings!
The guys from Camping Reviewed added a short description about what people can expect once they sign up and they did away with that horrible ‘Submit’ button. Instead, they crafted a call to action that is much more likely to resonate with their audience!
Another thing – keep your opt-in forms short and don’t ask for too much information all at once. People have no idea who you are at first and are very unlikely to give you their name, birthday, and address all in one go. For people to share that much information there needs to be a certain amount of trust involved. For now, settle for their email address. Remember, if you want your opt-in rates to go up, less is always more.
Start giving stuff away
Gated content is one of the best baits you have at your disposal to get people onto your list. If you have something of value (and I mean real value) invite people to download it after subscribing. Don’t farm for information here – again, email is all you need when you’re opt-in form is offering something in return. Once people get on to your list then you might consider giving them something else in exchange for their name, their birthday, or few minutes of their time for a survey. At this point, people already know a bit more about you so they will be less reluctant to share that information. When giving away content, make sure it’s useful –tips, tricks, case studies, white papers, coupon codes, discounts – anything that will help people achieve their goals faster or save a buck.Use your popular posts
There a chance that something that you’ve written in the past resonates with people and goes viral. Jump on that opportunity. Add an opt-in form at the bottom of that post and reap the benefits of its increased exposure. Also, edit that post for God’s sake! It might be something that you’ve written when you weren’t in a particular mood but it struck a chord with people. Go back to it, spruce it up, and add links to your other content in order to increase the amount of time people spend on your site. This will give you an opportunity to dazzle them and if you don’t collect an email on the first post, who is to say you won’t on subsequent pages they visit!There’s a lot more you can do to pump up your opt-in rates but doing this – the mere basics – is something that will make a great difference! You don’t even have to do all 5 (although I do advise it, it’s not that difficult or time consuming) – combining 2 or 3 will already show results. Make sure you’re testing stuff on a regular basis and never go complacent – try new things as they emerge. Change the copy, change opt-in form colours and form placement, and eventually you get the right balance and excellent results!
By Ivan Sršen
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